Roy Liran – 5 poems

Born in Israel in 1971. Lives in the Galilee with his wife and twins. Works in the IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority) as an archaeologist, architect and artist.
His first poetry book, ‘Not who I thought’ was published (in Hebrew) in 2016 by Pardes

Publishing. It includes 65 poems and several drawings by the author.

The opportunist

Once –

you would think me insidious if I said
I brought the summer rains just so you
would flock to my umbrella, convinced

a vicious cold to bring you to my heat.

Heartless, you would call me, had I
claimed to make the leaves stand
vibrant out when all they did was die.

Say I made the gray seem crooked
blue. Say I made the path seem straight.

Tell me no one can change the weather.

anything, but

screw it I cant read that not
Bukowski the other guy the one
everyone loves the one writing
as a man owning a supermarket
cart should smoke holding his
crumpled joint at the perfect
diagonal taking professionally deep
inhales and slow slow thoughtful
exhales of non-dissipating fumes
that hang around his head swinging
in that damned meaningful gray
wind that follows him everywhere

you know him

one day he came by to show me
something he was really bad at and
I loved him for it and after he left I
almost got me a stolen shopping
cart and a used rolled cigarette
but wrote of sandstones and trees
again instead of whatever because
every street has the better corner
for coffee and for hanging loose and
every crowd has the better face with
the better wrinkles with the bluer
eyes with the whiter stained teeth

The needless thing

A dry tide flows over
this unwilling earth,

invading the tightest cracks,
the hidden spaces, the dying
moisture. An arid breath, it